Death is a conclusion that all men must reach. It is a fate that he cannot escape and an enemy he cannot defeat. In Sophocles' Antigone, the Chorus dedicates its first ode to man's victories and its supreme vulnerability: death. The choral ode is divided into four sections: Strophe I, Antistrophe I, Strophe II, Antistrophe II, each focusing on either man's strengths, weaknesses, accomplishments, and consequences his actions yield. In Strophe II, the chorus elaborates on the triumphs man has achieved, but confesses that man has the inevitable destiny of death. In the five translations of the first choral ode composed by Fitts & Fitzgerald, Richard Emil Braun, H.D.F. Kitto, Elizabeth Wyckoff, and Paul Roche, there are nuances in such areas as format, language, and connotation in each of the translated Strophe IIs.…
